Environmental Health Practitioner

Our client's nationally recognised Regulatory Compliance and Investigations team is looking for an experienced Environmental Health Officer/ Practitioner to work as a Senior Paralegal. As an experienced EHO/P you have a diverse skill set. Our practice is equally diverse and will give you a new platform to use these skills. We advise household name clients across the broadest range of regulatory issues. The bedrock of our team is health and safety defence work. This work is often high profile and the team is involved in many of the high profile cases currently in the media, you will play a supporting role in those cases. This work starts either at the incident or interview under caution stage and runs through inquests to any prosecution. The majority of this work is litigation or pre-litigation based but the ability to provide advice is also vital. You will support the London team and it is well known for it its work in the food industry from manufacturing to retail and service industry. We support clients launching products on to the market across the EU to dealing with challenges when things go wrong. This covers much more than just food hygiene and food safety and covers every aspect of food law. In addition to the product specific issues our team has been at the centre of the biggest issues impacting the sector in recent years from horsemeat to sugar tax and obesity strategy issues that have been core to the news. Food law is also core area of interest in Brexit this is central to our work and future advice. The team also provides advice in fire safety, fair trading, product recall, consumer protection and Environmental issues and experience of these areas would be beneficial. All of our team work on an agile basis wherever they are needed. In contrast to usual EHO work in a district this work would involve travel to wherever the issue or client is. Accordingly, this role would be field based with an office base in one of our non-London southern offices but with regular attendance in our London office to support the team based there, though remote and home-working is also possible. We require an officer who will thrive and meet the challenge of working within a highly motivated area, specialising in food and health and safety. You will be a qualified Environmental Health Officer or able to demonstrate competency in Health and Safety and food safety as a minimum, additional qualifications (CIEH, IOSH, NEBOSH, Crisis Management etc.,) would be an advantage. Current knowledge of Food Safety and Health and Safety legislation is a pre-requisite. Candidates should able to demonstrate a keen interest in handling a wide variety of interesting and challenging regulatory work and be willing to travel across the UK. We are looking for a team player with strong communication skills and attention to detail as well as commercial acumen.

Main function of job: The work will comprise two primary elements: providing advice to our household name client base covering primarily food and health and safety issues but also some understanding of or willingness to learn fair trading, environmental issues and construction related safety issues would be an advantage. The second element is working as part of the defence team in regulatory ligation from crisis to Court. In many cases you will be one of the first people on the ground and will be conducting the defence investigation to provide the basis for being able to the advise the client. In both cases you will be required to advise clients and deliver results within usually tight deadlines. You will provide the highest service level to external clients, to provide and maintain management information under the terms of client service level agreements.

Main Duties:• Understand client requirements and manage cases / non contentious advice in line with service level agreements and best practice.• Deal with a caseload of H&S regulatory matters as well as assisting the team.• Analyse risk and further develop sound judgement enabling the justification of decisions to clients internally and externally.• Prioritise work effectively and maximise efficiency and ensure client service level agreements and court deadlines are met.• Achieve time recording targets split between chargeable and investment time in any one financial year.• Understand the individual role in the context of the wider business and pro-actively seek to contribute to increased efficiency in developing a workload appropriate to level of technical and legal knowledge.• Build working relationships internally and externally in order to develop business networks and create a solid understanding of the Firm’s direction and client needs.• To ensure that client relationships are maintained at all times and developed where possible, supporting client development initiatives / events as appropriate. • Develop increased levels of technical and commercial knowledge via training or supervised working practices.• Use of the Case Management system and use of standard documentation wherever appropriate.• Record all time accurately.• Follow all the Firm's policies and procedures.• Ensure confidentiality is maintained at all times.